


rivers until I reach you

by withkissesfour



Category: Janet King (TV)
Genre: F/F, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 12:35:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7845187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withkissesfour/pseuds/withkissesfour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are fresh tears, making tracks in Janet's cheeks, when she opens the door to Bianca.  (set immediately after 2x08).</p>
            </blockquote>





	rivers until I reach you

They debrief her in a small, familiar room of the station - white walls, two chairs, no crying. There’s a lukewarm coffee making rings on the plastic table between them and the counsellor crosses and uncrosses her legs, taps and taps her heels against the floor, clicks and clicks and _clicks_ her pen. There’s a thread that sits up on the shoulder seam of her bright blue blazer - waving a little in the light breeze of the air-conditioner - and Bianca wants to lean over the coffee and tissues and notepad, pull at it until it’s gone, unravel the woman while she asks her how she feels.

She grips the arms of the chair instead, until her knuckles turn white. She sets her face in a stare instead (no crying) and tells her what she saw, what she knows, how she felt, how she feels. She hands over her gun, fills in paperwork until her fingers ache, tells everyone she’s fine, she’s fine, she’s fine, until they believe it. She is pulled apart and put back together, and it’s dark by the time she shuffles into the reception area, suppressing a yawn and forcing a smile when Andy jumps from his chair and comes towards her.

‘I’m fine’, she says, before he asks, and he breathes a gentle smile (wrinkles at the corners of his eyes), gives her arm a gentle squeeze. He leans forward and say something, but it’s muffled by the incessant tones of the station phone, the patter of the rain on the old roof, and the yells of the man - reeking of alcohol, shirtless, stumbling past them - and the drone of the radio, playing the seven o’clock news. Janet’s name rings through the fm crackle, in a dull recap of the afternoon’s events, followed by the weather, and Bianca feels like crying. He puts his arm gingerly around her shoulders then.

‘Come stay with us tonight’, he repeats.

The rain is coming down in earnest when they begin to move outside, and he holds her a little closer, his jacket stretched out above their heads. She turns to him, as he opens the door to the car, clears her throat, bites her lip, shuffles her feet.

‘She’s fine’, he says, warm and certain, before she asks.

-

_Still coming over? x_

The buzz of her phone jolts her eyes open, the bright screen casting a dull, brief glow over the bathroom - no lights, foggy with steam. She's sunk against the cold tiles of the shower, her knees pulled up around her chest, a jet of hot water hitting the tired muscles of her naked back, wetting her hair. 

Lina had left two aspirin and a towel on the seat of the toilet, shuffled her feet a little, hand whispering over her stomach. They don’t know each other, not really, and their brief conversation was an endless flow of apologies - _sorry about this, sorry about today, sorry about the mess_. She had pointed towards the room, adjoining the dark ensuite, a pile of books and old clothes.

‘Sorry, sorry’, she had said, ‘we’re making room for the nursery’.

‘The nursery?’

‘Oh, fuck. _Fuck._ I wasn’t supposed to say!’

She had groaned then, but her face had split into a smile, and she laughed  _don’t tell him I told you_ , against her hair as she enveloped her in a hug, and Bianca had thought (chin propped against Lina’s shoulder, an old shirt askew on her frame), that not everything is so horrible, not really, not always. She held on a little longer than she should (they barely know each other), her shoulders slumping and a breathy sigh escaping her mouth and Lina had leaned back, brow furrowed. 

‘I’m sure she’ll call’, she had said, cupped her cheek for a moment with her slender hands, and Bianca tugged nervously at the hem of her blouse. ‘She just needs time’.

She hasn't parted with her phone, gripped it tightly between her hands from the moment she left the station and is holding it just out of reach of the water now, wiping it free of condensation with her forearm and shaking her hair out of her eyes to read the text again and again, and _again_ , and it's punctuated with a kiss.   _Go,_ every muscle seems to say. _Go,_ screams every bone in her body, and it takes every ounce of self-restraint not to wrap a towel around herself, and get in the car.

Instead she wraps an arm tighter around her legs, pulls them closer to her chest, braces herself against the phone buzzing again, a reminder. _Still coming over? x_

Janet needs time, she tells herself. A mantra. Familiar. _Janet’s not ready. Janet needs time._

-

She’s half-asleep when Janet calls her. There’s a mug of tea on the bedside table (peppermint, Andy had whispered, grinning when Bianca catches his arm, mumbles _congratulations_ )  and her body is tangled up in fresh sheets, and the phone vibrates noisily from underneath the pillow. She picks it up without looking. 

‘Bianca?’

She fumbles with the phone, holds it close to her ear, sits up amongst the pillows. 

‘Did you get my message?’

‘Janet, I -’

She hears a sniffle then. A heaving sob. She hears the shuffle of slippered feet on a wooden floor, the _glug_ of pouring wine, a loud smash, an elongated _fuckkkk!_

‘Janet, what happened?’

‘Please - can you -’, her words are garbled, are barely decipherable through the short, sharp breaths ( _in, in, in, out_ ), that pierce the crackle of the phone line. ‘Please - come - come over’.

-

 

There are fresh tears, making tracks in Janet's cheeks, when she opens the door to Bianca. Her shoulders (narrow, curled in to her body, framed by a large sweater) are heaving - up and down, up and down, and her breaths are shallow -  _in, in, in, in, out._ Her nose is red and running, and her eyes are frightened, bloodshot, heavy with tears.  Bianca moves forward then, up the stairs and inside the house, grasps Janet's trembling fingers with one hand (camomile tea, stolen from Andy's house, in the other) and moves her away from the door - careful to lock it, careful to check when Janet's eyes get wider and her tongue struggles to form the words, and she points towards the large wooden entrance,  _please check it, please._

Gingerly, she takes Janet by the shoulders, helps her further into the house, lets her slump against the bottom step of the large staircase and crouches in front of her. Bianca's hands fret around her trembling body, her tracksuit legs, and she shuffles closer, but she doesn't touch her. Instead she forces a smile, leans in a little, regulates her own breathing.

'Do it just like me, okay?'

Janet shakes her head, blonde hair falling from it's ponytail, looks at Bianca, who nods, smiles.  _You can._

'You're doing amazing', she mumbles, then breathes in through her nose slowly, out through her mouth slowly ( _in_ ) ( _out_ ) ( _in_ ) ( _out_ ), a sigh of relief when Janet begins to do the same. 'You're okay, you're okay, you're doing amazing.'

'Tony left - I - I told him to go. I thought I'd be fine', she says, rubbing her wet eyes with her slender fingers, breathing still shallow, worsening a little when she peers down at Bianca, bites her lip, 'and then I got the kids down, and I -'

Bianca wants to cry, too, when she thinks about the twins, about Janet alone and terrified, but stares up at her instead, brow set in determination, hand whispering over her knee.  _Breathe. Janet, breathe._

_-_

Janet's hands worry around the glass, bring it to her mouth and she gulps the orange juice down, watching Bianca move around the kitchen. The wine glass, shattered all over the floor, is scooped up, the shiraz mopped, the kettle boiled. She jumps from her position, on the bottom step of the staircase, when Bianca yelps, a shard of glass stuck in her foot as she moves towards the mugs, the sting of pain overwhelming the brief, wondrous sense of  _relief._ It's early, early morning (one fifty-two am, reads the oven clock), and her chest feels a little lighter, her head pounds a little less, and she feels horribly, wonderfully at home. 

Janet shuffles over, turns off the whistling kettle, then pats the wooden bench until Bianca hops onto it, sits with her legs swinging off the side. There are old tear tracks on her pale cheeks, and her hair has been pulled back off her face, and her face is set in a grimace as she leans down, pulls the glass from her foot, puts a bandaid there. 

'My hero', Bianca mumbles, resting her head briefly against Janet - in the dip above her shoulder blade - before she jumps down from the bench, moves over to brew the tea, stolen from Andy's house. 

'You have no idea', Janet says, moving behind her, voice heavy as she mutters  _thank you, thank you, thank you,_ lips warm against the curve of her neck. 

-

The dregs of camomile sit in the bottom the mug on Janet's bedside table, and her bra has been discarded, somewhere near the laundry bag. Bianca tucks the blanket around Janet's shoulders, and starts to move away, when Janet catches her wrist between her fingers. 

'Stay?' she asks, half-asleep.

So Bianca grabs a blanket (discarded on the chair in the corner of the room) crawls atop the covers, her body making a dip in the mattress when she shuffles towards Janet. She puts one arm, tentative, over Janet's torso, and curls the other up around her own chest.

'Are you sure?'

Janet moves then so that her aquiline nose is against Bianca's cheek, so that her lips are on the corner of Bianca's lips, her breathing soft and low and steady, and very very close, her hair falling a little across her face.  _Stay._


End file.
